Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17455

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Publication type: news

Schneider C, Young A
Emory acknowledges past issues with professor, launches investigation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 2008 Oct 4
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/10/04/Emory_professor_investigation.html

Full text:

Emory University officials said Saturday that a prominent psychiatric researcher has been accused several times in recent years with not disclosing earnings from drug companies and not revealing potential conflicts of interest.

Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff is a central figure in a congressional probe regarding potential conflicts of interests between drug companies and doctors. On Friday, he voluntarily stepped down as chairman of Emory’s Department of Psychiatry pending the outcome of the investigation.

“There were serious allegations in the past, and now there are even more allegations. And we are investigating,” said Earl Lewis, Emory’s executive vice president of academic affairs.

Congressional investigators have found that Nemeroff received $2.8 million in consulting fees from companies, some whose drugs he was evaluating, and failed to report a third of that amount to the university, according to a story this weekend in the New York Times. If true, the allegations represent a violation of federal research rules and university ethics guidelines.

Lewis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday that depending on the outcome of the university’s own probe, the allegations could lead to the firing of Nemeroff.

The Nemeroff revelations also raise questions about Emory’s compliance with federal conflict-of-interest disclosure rules.

It’s unclear what impact the findings by congressional investigators may have on the university’s current and future National Institutes of Health funding. When Emory’s researchers apply for NIH grants, the university has the responsibility under federal regulations to monitor and manage any potential conflicts of interest those individuals may have.

In 2008, Emory University received $251 million in funding from NIH â €“ 61 percent of its total research funds from outside sponsors.

“These regulations are intended to ensure a level of objectivity in publicly funded research,” U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a letter Thursday to Emory President James Wagner.

Grassley entered the text of the letter into the Congressional Record last week. The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Grassley has been investigating medical conflicts of interest nationally.

Emory officials said Nemeroff has helped bring in millions of dollars in grants over the years. At the same time, they insisted he has not received any special treatment.

Officials said they have raised concerns with Nemeroff’s behavior several times since 2003, but he has remained department chairman, a post he has held since 1991.

Lewis said he believes the university handled the matters appropriately at the time, but also said Emory must devise better ways to track such matters in the future.

“We don’t want [medical faculty] to be so close to the drug companies, and we don’t want them to be perceived as being in the pocket of the companies,” Lewis said.

According to Grassley’s letter, Nemeroff often did paid speeches for the drug company GlaxoSmithKline between 2000 and 2006; he was paid $960,000 by the company in that period but disclosed only about $35,000 to Emory.

Also, from 2003 to the summer of 2008, Nemeroff was the chief investigator on a $3.9 million National Institutes of Health study on five Glaxo drugs for treatment of depression, the letter stated.

The power of drug companies over doctors, medical academics and institutions is a growing concern, said Dr. Louis Sullivan, former U.S. Secretary of Health and current member of the nonprofit board overseeing Grady Memorial Hospital. Grady uses many doctors from Emory.

“I think it’s important that all such relationships with pharmaceutical companies and physicians and academics be fully disclosed,” Sullivan said. This is needed, he said, “to make sure they are appropriate, and to maintain the confidence of the public.”

Nemeroff did not respond to telephone calls Friday and Saturday, and no one answered the door at his home Saturday morning.

In a statement released by Emory and attributed to the doctor, he said, “To the best of my knowledge, I have followed the appropriate university regulations concerning financial disclosures.”

Emory’s conflict-of-interest committee has taken him to task several times.

In March 2004, the committee raised concerns regarding Nemeroff’s relationship with Glaxo, or GSK; and in June 2004, the panel concluded that Nemeroff failed to follow procedures and policies regarding his consulting agreements and that he failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest, according to Grassley’s letter.

At that time, the doctor promised administrators that he would earn less than $10,000 a year from Glaxo to comply with the rules; yet he allegedly went on to earn about $171,000 from the company in 2004.

Attempts to reach a GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman by telephone on Saturday were unsuccessful.

Outside Emory, Nemeroff has had to deal with at least one other conflict-of-interest allegation.

In 2006, he left his post as editor-in-chief of the national medical journal Neuropsychophamacology following an outcry over an article he wrote, giving a positive review to a medical implant manufactured by Houston-based Cyberonics. Nemeroff and seven of his co-authors did not disclose in the article that they worked as paid consultants and sat on an advisory board at the company.